Raising Children – Page 14 – Inside The Mind of a Psychiatrist

When a significant number of men take no responsibility for raising their sons and daughters, the kids take it upon themselves to create the father they don’t have. They visit daddy in prison and see what a tough-ass the guy is — jailhouse tats, bad attitude slouch, and the if-u-mess-with-me-I’ll-break-every-bone-in-your-body deadeye stare.

Everyone needs a daddy. If you can’t have one home at night helping mom and helping with your homework, you become just like the one who lives behind bars or works the street.

Add to the mix, the need for a teenager to differentiate himself from his parents [music, dress, attitude, defiance], what better way to piss off an entire generation of free-thinker-baby-boomers than to act like a low life hoodlum. So now rock stars, young men and woman of all socioeconomic classes, and adults with a teenage wannabe mentality, are walking around with jailhouse tattoos. They are adamant that it’s not a jailhouse, screw-you mentality. It’s a fashion statement. You’re so uncool if you can’t see it.

The mind of this psychiatrist watches in awe at how crazy we all are. Oh yeah, I need to go out and buy pants 4 sizes too big and wear them around my knees.

A patient reminded me about the November 1978 Jonestown massacre. 913 members of The People’s Temple cult committed suicide by drinking grape-flavored Kool Aid laced with potassium cyanide. Their leader, Jim Jones, after a number of practice sessions, ordered the entire cult to drink the deadly mixture. They did exactly what he said!

Psychotic, crazy, mass hypnosis, gullibility? Probably all.

Is it that much different now, 34 years later?

Charismatic preachers, acting like messengers from some crazy god, continue to have enormous religious and political power. In their eyes, birth control and homosexuality are clearly a sin. Now the preaching has taken on an even crazier tempo. Republicans are battling each other to prove who is the “true” conservative.

As a psychiatrist, I often wonder what is really going on. Am I the crazy one? If I don’t believe, will I not get into “The Kingdom”, or wherever religious fanatics go who are true believers? Whatever their fantasy might be, I’m not interested in joining them.

When a patient is overtly psychotic, logic doesn’t help. Talking to rigid evangelicals also won’t help. So what will?

Join groups like Planned Parenthood, work to have all 50 states pass equality laws supporting gay rights, speak out against any school that won’t teach evolution, speak out against any use of violence to advocate a religious belief, and do whatever you can to expose any hint of terrorism that will limit our right to have the freedom to come to our own conclusions about the world.

Because so many people need to drink Kool Aid, doesn’t mean that we have to respect or ignore the dangers that it breeds.

Any thoughts?

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